This personal tribute was originally written for a souvenir brought out by the Hind Mazdoor Kisan Panchayat (HMKP) to mark George Fernandes’s 88th birthday, June 3, 2018, and is republished here with their permission, on the occasion of his death today.

George Fernandes first entered my life when I was six or seven years old, as a cause of envy. For, when he once came to Delhi, my father took my brother Niranjan to see him, leaving me behind. His signature scripted in Devanagari in my brother’s autograph book was a daily reminder of the exclusion. But I did come to know George eventually, a privilege that I owe to my father K.G. Ramakrishnan, a lifelong socialist who had participated in the 1942 Quit India movement.

A friend and admirer of Ram Manohar Lohia, my father attributed the emerging relevance of George Fernandes in Indian politics to the genius of the great Doctor Sahib as much as to Fernandes’s own array of talents. The secret of success lies not only in knowing how to lead, but also in knowing how to be led, as Fernandes’s equation – first with Placid D’Mello and then with Lohia – would bear out.

The socialist pantheon in the ’60s and ’70s was impressive, but even amongst its stalwarts, the cerebral Madhu Limaye and the dashing George Fernandes stood out. Lohia’s uncanny instinct could spot and galvanise political energy to fight the degenerating ethos of the Congress party. Key to this was an organised workers’ movement and George Fernandes was the man for this task.

(L-R) Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, Mani Ram Bagri, Madhu Limaye, S.M. Joshi. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

George’s march from a seminary in Bangalore to the trade unions of Bombay is legendary. The effortless mastery of Hindi, Marathi and other languages, the ability to forge (and break) alliances and above all, the sheer magnetism that could command lasting loyalty, marked him with a heroism that would endure. It would endure because behind the dazzle and the sparkle lay a core of genuine moral courage. The many physical assaults and spells of incarceration that George suffered unflinchingly in free India gave hope that the spirit of Gandhi had survived the marginalisation of the Mahatma by the Congress.